


Mercenaries

by Raigat



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22785607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raigat/pseuds/Raigat
Summary: This is my first work I'm attempting to get out in public. I already have several chapters/oneshots made. Hope you enjoy reading as much as I'm enjoying writing. Questions, comments, and criticisms are all welcome.Set in World War 3 and follows a group of supersoldier mercenaries in their day-to-day lives as they navigate the war as well as their professional and personal relationships. Will include everything from battles to little moments. As a heads up, just about anything I write will likely include graphic violence, sex, language, and other such material to some degree.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character





	1. 1

His boot bumps something just under the table. Rex bends down to see what it was, coming back up with another severed arm, shreds of meat hanging off in strips along it and a finger in some broken position like a bad anatomy drawing. It gets tossed at Finn's feet since the largest teammate seemed to think they were on break, leaning against an overturned desk missing a corner with a cigarette poking from his lips.   
“Get your lazy ass off that smoke break, we still got to meet back with Snow and Crota and count the southern wing. That means clearing all the bodies here first, missing bits included.”  
Finn sighed behind closed eyes, taking one last long draw to burn the rest of his cigarette before meeting his leader's own lupine gaze.  
“If you're in such a hurry to see your girlfriend, just go, I'll clean this up. I blasted the last like, ten guys through here myself.” He motions with his automatic shotgun, a perk of being as special as the Schrodinger's Forest mercenaries were. “You're going to be looking for a lot of pieces. Don't see why we have to organize that kind of thing anyway, the lab coats get it in any case.”  
“You know it's not-” Rex cut himself off, rubbing at his hair and just noticing the red stain his hand came back with. His hair was gray, not red. Blood from some now dead guy, whatever, a shower would fix that. “Because it's professional. We already get called superpowered kids because of our age, lets not add our behavior to the problem.”  
Finn rolls his eyes, not an unusual response, but does comply and chucks the lone limb into a pile of it's kind close to the door. The other mentioned pair of the group walks in seconds later, eyes falling on the mess that still had yet to be picked up.  
“Northern wing is clear but it looks like we could have took our time.” Snow observed.  
Finn let out a disgruntled sound, now on another cigarette since they would likely have time over whatever discussion was about to happen. He honestly did need to quit the things. His cardio was starting to get a little crappier than he liked. For a supersoldier anyway. He would still beat the top human marathon runners back-to-back and still have breath to spare before feeling tired.  
But looking at Rex was a good reminder that he couldn't hold himself to human standards. The larger teammate liked to give their leader hell at every opportunity and disagreed with the very unprofessional relationship he and their second-in-command Snow had that sometimes caused them to discuss plans as if nobody else was in the room until brought back to the opposite fact, but he would, as loathe as the idea was, admit the canine enhanced soldier was a fine example of why their existence was justified. They were all four young adults, in a technical sense anyway, taken or bought from broken homes in different countries for the express purpose of testing the new meta weapons of World War 3. Supersoldiers, specialized weapons, a lot of stuff that was formerly only thought of as Hollywood fodder.   
Anything short of WMDs. After the debacle with Afghanistan it was generally agreed by the participating powers that they didn't want to wipe themselves out by accident so destructiveness packed into a smaller, less contagious package had become the norm. And Rex had managed to coerce that into a fine machine North America was desperate to keep on their payroll and not on someone else's. Hell, he could probably end the war within months if given a general's status, guy had the tactical mind for it.  
But there was their collective moral shortcoming. None of them wanted it to end. War was hell, but it was also profit. As long as WW3 raged, someone would want their not-so-cheap services and they would never have to try and integrate who they were and what they had seen into some normal civilian life.   
“Those are bad for you.” The final member of their circle, Crota, quipped while coming to stand next to Finn.  
He scoffs and flicks the item away, glad to have someone else to banter with. Crota wasn't much of a talker but was a good listener and at least when he did speak he made sense.  
“They just aggravate me sometimes.”  
There was a period of silence before a reply.  
“They do behave irrationally at times.”  
“That's putting it mildly.” Finn rolled his eyes again. “Hey, if you two are done flirting, which you don't have to do may I remind you since you already won that game, can we get this done? There's a paycheck waiting and if I miss the game tonight I'm shooting somebody free of charge.”   
Snow threw a dirty glare, not taking the jabs at her and Rex as lightly as her lover.  
“And if I have to tell you one more time we are not a game I'm going to shoot that whole damn team you like so much so you can't watch them ever again.”  
“Kitty still got claws.” Finn deadpanned. “Rex, control your lady, if she hasn't already ripped your balls off with them.”   
There was a moment everyone thought the two were actually going to come to blows before Rex caught Snow's arm to resolve things.  
“How about we split up in new teams. Me and Snow will clean up what's left elsewhere, you two deal with this room. Clear? Dismissed.” He tugs her along, her still holding the glare at Finn until the teams were out of each other's sights. Crota shakes his head but waits for an extended period of time before saying anything just to be sure Rex or Snow's enhanced hearing wouldn't catch it.  
“She's going to kill you one day.”  
Finn almost lights up another smoke before catching himself and choosing instead to start focusing on corpse picking.


	2. 2

Rex didn't trust these guys one bit right now. They were slogging through the humid jungles of South America, them and another small attachment of supersoldiers accompanying a regiment of North American forces. The major part had recently taken a city and sent a company as well as their mercenary allies into the nearby areas to deal with any who escaped and scout for possible counter-attack areas, traps being laid by those in retreat, generally anything that could make their progress more difficult. Normally Rex and his kind weren't used for this kind of thing at all, especially not two squads which would be outright overkill and a waste, but it had been a bad battle with lots of enemy present.   
The fighting had been tougher than anticipated, with street-to-street fighting for every house and block and lots of what the conventional soldiers saw as 'dirty' deaths. Snipers, ambushes from places the defenders knew damn well they weren't going to survive the response, sending child soldiers, booby-traps, spider-holes, a huge shit show. It had made the surviving veterans tense, on edge, angry. And that wasn't taking into account the whole reason such significant forces were sent down here in the first place.  
The SAC, or South American Coalition, a loose alliance of the tinpot dictatorships that typically ruled the continent had fucked up in a way so spectacular that even the always stoic Crota had openly gawked. The SAC, a very minor player in WW3 so far, mostly because they had no real reason to fight in Europe and Asia where things were heaviest and because the actual heavyweights didn't want to expend the resources just yet to make a go at them, had apparently decided they wanted to be recognized on the same level as North America and the Neo Pact. So they arrested and kidnapped as many non-native looking people as they could, turning out to mostly be U.S. citizens and western Europeans, and broadcasted a huge event to anywhere their news stations could reach. Men, women, and children all got to be the victims in the single largest televised atrocity show in history.  
Rape, executions in all manner from primitive to creative, torture that may or may not kill, torture that wouldn't kill but certainly leave it's undeniable footprint, and more were all highlights, on everyone, in several different locations. Babies hacked to death with machetes, fetuses cut out of pregnant women to be tossed on sharp sticks(sometimes roasted over a fire later), non-pregnant women having their stomachs sliced open to have a small enough child forced in, men stacked like wood atop one another to be crushed via felled trees, school age girls violated to death until their bodies just couldn't handle the trauma anymore, brothers mutilated in mirroring ways like ears or eyes being cut and gouged or arms and legs taken, parents forced to kill their own children or let the tormentors do as they wanted, intestines getting strung along high grass or tree limbs while people were still alive were all things Rex could recall of the top of his head. It only got worse as it went on. And it went on for a little over six hours. The ever perceptive Snow had pointed out to him some of the troops that were around monitors and televisions at the time and might be recognizing someone in the mess, a brother, sister, mother, father, girlfriend, wife, husband, son, daughter, friend, family, extended family, whoever.  
He wouldn't, probably couldn't, ever forget the looks on their faces. It all boiled down to that the SAC should not have done that. They really should not have done that. It gave North America carte blanche to do whatever the hell they wanted in response.  
Nobody would come to the SAC's defense, no organization or government or anyone could condemn North America for whatever action they took after that. Even the countries they thought would rise with them, mainly in Latin America, knew better than to impede and so instead granted full and free passage to their northern neighbors. Needless to say, retaliation was pure hell.  
The sneaky deaths were essentially all they could inflict, as their standing armies got nothing short of wiped out. Opposing artillery, aircraft, armor, infantry, it was all steamrolled in probably one of the more dominating and destructive displays in military history that left little more than ruins behind. The only thing oddly missing were the SACs own supersoldiers, but Rex knew they had very few and so the special units were likely being kept by the presidents and dictators as personal security.  
His distrust didn't come from the chaos though, this was war and that was normal. It came from the fact that these people were not here for victory. They were here for vengeance. They no longer saw the South Americans as people to be defeated, they were now monsters in human form that deserved extermination for what they had done. That mindset in conflict historically lead to some very bad places.  
The crack of a rifle broke the monotony of the march, sending troops heads down in the foliage while Schrodinger's Forest were already using their enhanced senses to triangulate where it had come from. A sniper, especially at distance, was considerably less dangerous to them considering that in their current formation no one's back was turned to get shot at and they could easily see and dodge a single bullet coming right at their face. So long as the shooter didn't break out an automatic, shooting more would only give away their location better. Turns out it wasn't needed as a few quick calls pointed to a general direction until the team narrowed down where their attacker could be.  
Snow, with the superior sight among the group, is the first to train her rifle on one spot, getting a look at her target and steadying her aim. Rex knew it was an incredibly bad time, but he randomly thought she was as beautiful as her animal namesake for one moment. Perfectly as still as the predator, her hair matching its coat, and her feline face so focused on a single kill. Then the moment is broke when she mutters something harshly under her breath.  
“Fucking kid.” A short burst of fire after and their problem is no more.   
He knew she didn't mean in an antagonizing way. She was chastising the apparently child resistor for throwing their life away, knowing she couldn't let the kid live to continue taking potshots at them. None of them ever liked killing child soldiers, but they would. Us vs them and pack mentalities were strong things.  
“Quick check, make sure there's nobody else.” Rex commands and the visual sweep is clear after only a few seconds, him giving the crouching soldiers the signal to keep going. One claps a hand on his shoulder as they begin moving, the regular infantryman's strained face showing the wear this trip was having.   
“Charles got hit. He's not gonna make it.”  
Rex nodded in reply, not sure why he was being told this. Their medical skills weren't anything special and if the guy was already dying, not much they could do for him if medics were already attempting to patch him up somewhere in the formation.  
“They're gonna pay. They all have to pay.” The man made clear, his hand tightening on their mercenary ally's shoulder. “Can one of you grab the bastard that was shooting?”   
Rex did not like the sounds of that one bit. There might not be a plan yet, emphasis on yet, but he had no doubt these soldiers intentions were getting worse for anyone they crossed, civilian or combatant. But they were paid to accompany, help, and generally lend their assistance to the regulars. So he nods to Finn, guy liked carrying stuff anyway, to go retrieve the corpse. There's a heavy silence when the young boy is brought back, body riddled with a trio of bullets, and it's spread through the group that Charles was dead.  
One of the regulars takes it off Finn's hand with an almost drugged-like shake of his head and the company is off again, a little more tense than before and on the lookout for more surprises. The humidity never let up, the grass never got any less threatening with the possibility of traps or guns behind them, and the other supersoldier unit even got bored enough to start trying to talk to them. No Scream was their callsign, Rex never liked them. Bunch of sadistic bastards more akin to hunters than soldiers, like a rabid pack of dogs that didn't kill a rabbit because they needed food but because it was fun. They would have done this shit for free, the pay was bonus.  
After a few miles of this, the lack of activity perturbed the Schrodinger's Forest leader. Had the army seriously not left any sort of parting surprises, rearguard, anything? Had they even tried to evacuate civilians? Or were they letting the citizens take their chances with the invaders?  
His worries are slowly confirmed when the jungle begins thinning and more signs of people are found. Obvious paths where humans and animals have often traveled, directions on signposts in what he guessed was Spanish or Portugese, and eventually actual buildings. More modern than a village, definitely not big enough to be a city, they had run into a small town he guessed, residents quickly falling back to give the rolling tide of armed men wide berth or outright running away.  
The first glimpse at things going badly was the child corpse from the earlier ambush being tossed into the middle of the street like a sack of garbage, the slight thud visibly startling some of the onlookers.  
“Whose kid is this?!” The soldier yelled as loud as he could to get all their attention. No one answered him, just each other in confused looks and mutterings. Right, language barrier. Another fixed that by stepping to his side and yelled again, Rex assumed the same phrase but in a native tongue.  
That caught some more focus and some shuffling and whispering later a woman pushed through the gathering crowd and ran up to the gathered troops, dropping down on her knees with eyes going wide in recognition of the body. It wasn't long before the hysterics and crying started and she cradled the corpse, easy to figure out it was her son dead. Rex thought that was the worst part. Until a chill traveled through his veins and a second later the stock of a rifle was slammed into the side of her head. His earlier intuition was apparently right.  
There was a lot of shouting in response and several citizens took steps forward as if to help or do something but got quickly halted by a row of soldiers aiming guns at them. A rolling crack split the air, but not from them. From the guy standing over now two corpses of son and mother. The look in his eyes said all that needed to about what was soon to go down.  
“Light them up.”  
Pure chaos followed. Guns erupted in chatters of automatic fire, momentarily bright sprays indicated those hit, bodies fell to the ground, some dead and some alive, people began fleeing, soldiers began chasing. The No Scream unit joined in the fracas, pulling out their melee weapons rather than using gunfire. Schrodinger's Forest all stood there, looking from the scene to each other in an overhanging question of what to do.  
“Well this has officially gone to shit.” Finn spoke up. No one disagreed, no one said anything really. A battle became a scouting mission and now turned into a massacre in progress. They all four saw someone running at them with a large knife, resigned to the fate of his town but willing to take some of the attackers down with him. “You don't want to do that.” Crota tried to warn, drawing his sidearm and putting a rapid double-tap into the man's chest when he didn't stop ten feet away. Another casualty joined the piling up dead, the still group being left alone afterwards. Civilians ran for their lives only to be gunned down from behind, some curled into balls while soldiers beat them with stocks and boots, the few that had bayonets used them to gruesome effect, No Scream tore a man apart alive in the road as he tried to crawl away. Clawed and sliced, but never gave the final blow, of course they didn't.  
“Hey!” Someone finally vied for their attention. An infantryman dragging a woman by the hair from a building with a man clinging for dear life, another soldier struggling to dislodge him. By age comparison, brother or husband probably. “Get this guy off!”  
The request confused Rex at first for the fact that shooting the man to remove him was so simple even these geniuses couldn't have forgot they could do that in the middle of this mess. Then it hit him. They intended to make him watch.   
Outwardly the leader displayed no expression but inside he was questioning himself. Were they really going to allow this to happen? To help make it happen? To become participants in whatever history would one day call this? There was a difference between watching from the sidelines and joining in.  
They had no doubt allowed atrocities to happen with the success of their missions, but that was usually an in and out killing type of day, the regular soldiers left to their devices while the mercenaries collected their pay. They hadn't actually committed a massacre against unarmed civilians personally before. It was too late to change sides now though. The monsters that hid inside all people were off the leash and would not stop until their rage was quenched. So it was kill them all to stop it or help them.  
“Finn.” Rex turned and nodded, giving his comrade a subtle cutting gesture. The big man returned the nod in understanding, making his way over to the mess and lashing his boot out right into the clinging man's temple, crumpling his grip and his body from the woman. At least the poor guy wouldn't have to watch now, his skull and brain mush. There was an argument, Finn saying he thought they meant kill the guy, and the soldiers going back to what they were doing because they sure as hell couldn't do anything to the supersoldier no matter what the misunderstanding was.  
Rex gave him a look of thanks as he made his way back to them, Finn shrugging while the lupine soldier glanced to Snow. She was expectedly turned away, never good with these kind of things or their aftermath. Crota stood there as if absent but really just making sure no one else came after them, waiting for his next order.   
“Come on.” Rex decided. “We can at least give these people a quick death. Better than what's planned for them.”


	3. 3

“Those fucking whores better not touch you again.” She rasped into his ear, mouth lowering right after to bite hard into his neck, definitely leaving a mark.   
“It's okay, it's okay. I only want you.” He shushes, gently pressing lips to her temple, strands of hair billowing with his light exhale. Her hold around his neck tightened, as did her legs around his waist and she slowly seemed to relax the side of her face into his throat.  
“They're both already with other people. I've heard them skyping.” Snow tells him and he just nods along, squeezing her hips comfortingly.  
“I know. I told them I was with you. They won't make another pass at me, we're fine.”  
“Sluts.” She makes a final vent at the imposers to her very freaking exclusive relationship, finally lifting her head to only look at her boyfriend without making more possessive markings and scratches on him. His jaw, neck, and shoulders looked like he had gotten into a fight with the big cat she was named after. He slowly nods again and pecks another soft kiss to her forehead. No way she was letting him get away that easy.  
Her clawed fingers drag across the furry gray slope of his scalp, practically shoving him into a hard kiss and they were both glad their skin was more along an animal pelt's toughness than a human's frail skin because otherwise he would have lots of very obvious new scars every time this happened. And her waist would be deeply bruised with how hard he was squeezing now, fiercely sinking into the rising heat of her mouth and indeed proving this want was not one sided.  
“Press.” Snow nearly hissed and Rex abided, pushing her body even further into the wall they were leaned against until that stupid thing called clothing was becoming a discomfort and it was pretty obvious just how much he wanted her by the scraping at the underside of her thigh.  
Rex began pawing at his girlfriend's top, so thankful they were out of uniform and in civie clothes, fingers eventually hooking the bottom so it could be removed. They both needed this. That massacre only a week ago, those two apparently unfaithful female soldiers hitting on him, No Scream trying to act friendly when neither of them could make it any more clear that they did not want to converse, they just needed some relief and this could be the very best way.  
The shirt is quickly gone, leaving Snow in only a simple light bra and he had to take the opportunity to soak in just how lucky he was considering he didn't get to see his lover's bare skin nearly as much as he would like to. She was originally from Honduras, that native dark skin lightened by the animal genes of the experimentation and leaving her some unique shade as if a pale person attempted to get a tan without quite getting there but not reverting back either. And while none of them had been old enough to really understand the kind of physical things that were attractive to them before becoming supersoldiers, he had learned being with her that one of his was definitely fitness.   
Her limbs were undoubtedly toned, muscle flexed so easily and visibly as their bodies ground together, she even had freaking abs that he absolutely had to scratch at every time he saw them. Some other guys apparently found that kind of thing weird on a girl judging from overheard gossip but it was one of her most attractive features in his eyes. So he kissed and touched and squeezed and pawed at everything about her until she was forced to just slash his tank top from his torso when he wouldn't separate long enough for her to pull it over his head. Not like she was sorry for it anyway.  
Snow uncurls her spine with all the fluidity of the feline she was, both arcing further into their locked lips while at the same time allowing space for her arms to travel underneath and seek the front of his pants. There wasn't any teasing, she wasn't the type, fingers deftly flicking and dragging the button and zipper and pulling the garment open in nearly one movement lasting only a couple seconds. Her nails shot back up in the next, digging into his firm shoulders as an anchor so she could hoist herself a little higher, causing his neck to arch up in a move he apparently deemed sexy judging from the absolutely vicious growl that slipped against her tongue as well as give him easy access to her own clothing. She was touched when he actually reached for her bra first instead of going straight for her pants, wanting to see all of her when they finally made love, and silently promised to rock the fuck out of his whole world when they were joined.  
Rex hurriedly hugged his beloved closer when all clothing covering her upper half was gone, both sighing in ecstasy to have their bare chests touching, her peaks fiercely hard and his muscles heavily panting. She was so soft and yet so steady at the same time and it was driving him crazy, he needed so much more of her. So his hands undue the bindings of her pants in almost as smooth a motion as she had, one hand holding her up by the back while the other helped her kick them off, the simple underwear getting the same treatment. They were both nude, sweaty, short of breath but continuing to make out, and so thankful to have one another right now.  
The lupine soldier's hands trembled on his lover's hips when her lithe fingers took hold of his erection and slowly guided it to her entrance, stroking him along her folds, making him lose the remaining air in his lungs so he had to break the kiss to breathe and simply watch her. The feeling was shocking, warm, so close, so personal. It had been what seemed like so long. Were they finally going to-a quiet whimper.  
No, they were not. Even as she struggled to simply sink down on him, to tell herself she could do this, to hold back the incoming tears, he knew this was as far as they were getting. Again. So he lets her get through the panic, simply cradling his lover's now shaking form as she cried it out on his shoulder, sometimes lightly beating at him with curled fists in anger and frustration actually directed at herself.  
They had never successfully had sex before. Some intimate activities could be done and enjoyed, but penetration had always ended like this. It was her broken home story, they all had one and it affected them all in different ways.  
Her parents, or adoptive ones rather(she wasn't sure if they got her from an actual orphanage or took her in from the streets, the government didn't bother to give them too much specifics of their backgrounds) were, to put it lightly, sick people. A pair of serial child molesters that accidentally killed her 'brother'(again, no clue if by blood or not) when they got a little too into some kink or another. So they were more careful with her. She could never recall all of it, but flashbacks in nightmares that came every now and then sometimes made her wonder if it shouldn't have been the other way around.  
The trauma had essentially messed up sex for her. It took a while for her to even be comfortable without clothes around him, though she really fought and tried to move on from everything. It had been mostly successful, just this last step seemed to be the hardest. Maybe it had the most painful memories attached, maybe it was the years long torture combining with something in their mixed DNA, it was impossible to tell. Human psychology no longer fully applied to them and their kind had not been around long enough for anything meaningful to be figured out about mentally.  
When the tears finally slowed to a crawl, silence reigned for a while, only the sound of his petting her hair and her nails softly scraping his neck challenging.  
“You should just go fuck them.” Snow muttered. “They're human. I bet you could go a bunch of times before you got tired. All I can-I can't even-”  
Rex knows this is going to slip further if he lets it so he's quick to hug her again, this time the meeting of their bodies not fulfilling a sexual need but being a source of comfort, of mutual warmth that helped share their heartbeats and slow this racing car crash of emotions.   
“They're not you so I don't want to do anything with them.” He quietly explained. “It's alright. You'll get through this. And I'll still be there when you do.”  
“Why would you even want to?” Still mumbling, but definitely less distressed. “They're probably hotter and won't lose their temper and do less dangerous missions.”  
“One is flat out wrong, you are definitely more attractive than them.” Rex replied, beginning to run fingers up and down her spine. It helped calm her when she started to settle down like this. “Two, your temper is sexy. Especially when you get mad at Finn. I just stare sometimes. Three, maybe I prefer badass to promiscuous.”  
A snort is breathed against his jawline.   
“I'm real badass looking right now. Also, you're a weird guy, pretty sure those priorities are supposed to be reversed.”  
The obvious sarcasm meant she was pretty much better and he could breathe a sigh of relief, settling his chin at a corner of her skull.  
“You took a helicopter out of the air by pouncing it. I'm pretty sure you've got some badass karma built up. And I'm a bunch of scientists version of a discount werewolf, of course I'm weird.”  
The joke went over well, earning a laugh, and their embrace wasn't sad anymore. Maybe not heated, but still romantic and close. Now they could talk and hold and just be there together, away from everything for a bit in their own little secluded spot they had managed to sneak off to.  
“They really didn't think about that when messing with the DNA, did they?”  
“No they did not.” He chuckled.  
A sudden spike in pressure at his neck makes Rex startle and he looks down only to see Snow's eyes burning into his own, gaze fierce and glassy and predatory all at once, the circle of her irises almost glowing in the darkness of their hidden location. His blood races immediately at a breakneck pace throughout him in sudden and extreme excitement. That stare was familiar.  
“I'm not letting you go yet.” Snow whispered to his lips, pulling away instead of coming closer, legs loosening from his hips so she could slide down his torso, ending up kneeling before him while he braced his hands on the wall behind her. And she made good on her promise from before with her hands and mouth, working him until even his unbridled stamina cracked and he would have dropped if not for being able to fall to his forearms on the wall, eyes screwing shut while his breathing descended into tiring growls that he had to regulate just to avoid passing out. She was sprinkling kisses to his waist and thighs when he regained enough sense to caress her hair and beckon her up so he could return the favor, mirroring her kneeling and lifting her legs up on his shoulders. Once sure she was supported at a comfortable angle on the wall, he dove into her being, becoming lapping waves that wore away her own constitution until purring sobs poured from her throat and she squirmed in ways that should have contorted her spine.  
They lay in silence for a while after to simply enjoy the quiet and cooling air. Away from war, bloodshed, money, barking generals, stuffy politicians, from every complication of their lives. This was where they could find peace.  
When it was eventually time to dress and rejoin their teammates in the commons room they found Finn playing five-finger-fillet with a member of No Scream while Crota tinkered with his custom sniper rifle, a big gun based off the Barrett .50 cal but at an obvious technological leap. Without the usual weight constraints such a item would entail when being wielded by regular soldiers, this one for his personal use had been fitted with all sorts of gauges and compensators as well as a special self-cycling bolt action. Utter pain to keep cleaned, but their serpentine imbued comrade was plenty meticulous enough for the job.  
“You know, I was always 'meh' about you two sneaking off for so long.” Finn greeted them. “But now I'm grateful because at least that means you're quiet. While Ripper here-” He indicated the strawberry-haired girl sitting across from him with a knife bouncing between her fingers. “-and Dirk made me listen to them in the next room for three fucking hours.”  
“We've been a busy bunch.” Ripper giggled that freaky laugh only a hyena could make. “It's great stress relief so got to go at it while we can.”  
“How do you even do that?!” Finn continued. “The normie soldiers talk like they're lucky to last ten minutes. You were in there for seriously two or three hours. And they've been gone for five!” He points out the other half of his own unit.   
“Supersoldier bodies, they're awesome.” Ripper grinned in response. “Come on, you haven't tried it out? You're a shark. I bet you'd break a normal girl in half.”  
Rex nor Snow needed that image in their heads. Crota even paused in his work, never as aloof as he looked. Finn apparently didn't like it either, rubbing a hand down his face.  
“If that's an attempt at getting me to join whatever weird-ery your squad has going on, then no, that is just not my brand of stress relief.”  
Ripper's laugh this time is as if she found something legitimately funny with that.  
“Join, no, our little circle is it's own thing. Explore a little. Maybe not with your squad either since miss 'I'll-break-a-bitch' is really not into sharing-” Snow wasn't sure if that was meant as a compliment or not, but it was true, she would break a bitch. “-but there's lots of local girls I bet would looove you.”  
Finn buries half his blade in the table they were playing on so it stays upright, shaking his head.   
“Can we talk about something else? It feels like I'm getting run through a dating service.”  
“The assignment.” Crota offers from his reclused space.  
“Right.” Finn latches onto the excuse. “Someone's antics made me forget about that.” Ripper cleaned out from under her nails with her knife instead of acknowledging her role in this forgetfulness. Was that blood? Her squad could not be gentle at anything it seemed. “Anyway, the brass informed us we've got a bead on the Brazilian president's location. He was planning to book it to some island with other SAC leaders but the North Americans caught on and have him grounded via the air force. The problem is he has his supers on hand so that won't last forever. They no doubt have him situated safely from any bombing attack we could pull, conventional assault is obviously a no-go with them around, as soon as they can get hold of some aircraft we haven't destroyed they'll be able to just fight their way out, and our employers can't spare the air power to combat that or even keep watch on him for too long. They want us to take him out quick. So gear the fuck up, we're going to be facing some of our own.”


	4. 4

It was way too quiet. Danger sign quiet. They were at the right place by every indication, from GPS tracking to visual scanning, Schrodinger's Forest spaced out and around the compound but none of them reporting any movement or activity at all. Which was not right.  
They knew that the cornered president wouldn't have many troops by now and that his personal squad of supersoldiers were the biggest issue, but they wouldn't be the only ones there. The guy had to have eyes on lookout, patrols, hands to handle supplies, the little stuff that needed done day-to-day. His protection couldn't do all of that while also being prepared for a possible aerial bombardment, not on their own. So why was there nothing moving?  
Rex gives a mix of animal noises and subtle signals only his squad would catch to coordinate their forward movement, leaving Crota back further as their overwatch on his rifle. Jungle foliage or not, he would see everything. So they crept through humid air, wide leaves, concentrations of bugs, and damp soil, stopping every now and then to reassess, see if they had initially missed something. Every time there was the same nothingness.  
They eventually made it right up to the psuedo-wall built of modern construction materials fortified with wood and other binders from the environment without so much as a peep being heard from the compound or Crota even warning them to be on the lookout for someone possibly being somewhere. But how? There was no way regular humans could hide from them like this, the other supersoldiers only had a 50/50 shot of concealing themselves for this long, and there was no way the president escaped without the air force noticing and telling them, right? After a final check with Crota to make absolutely sure they weren't being watched, the trio make their way carefully over the wall to the inside of their target site.  
“Oh.” Rex breathed in discovery. He saw now that they had a close up and all around view on things why there weren't any people present here. From this side it was clear someone got here before them, a battle already having taken place. Bullet holes in vehicles and tires, weapons laying discarded on the ground, small splatters of blood in the discolored dirt here and there. “Crota.” The leader communicated into his radio. “You can come in, I think we missed the action.”   
Once everyone was gathered the team did a thorough sweep through the place, outlying buildings, storage spaces, lookout towers, all of it, culminating with the small attempt at a mansion that was no doubt the centerpiece of the little retreat. A disturbing trend everyone was noticing but nobody was saying was that all the left behind damage only seemed to come from one angle. Inward. No one had assaulted this place, at least not from the outside. And the distinct lack of bodies...  
This was a rare case of their enhanced senses being a curse rather than a blessing when those doors were opened and that scent hit them. Pure decomposition and death and putrid odor. It was still a surprise what they found.  
All the massacred bodies missing from the yard area and buildings strewn along halls, stuffed into walls, hung from ceilings, everything collected here in this one building. Looks of horror and pain, flesh peeling from bone in the middle of decay, corpses eaten up with maggots or other infestations to varying degrees wriggling around in this cornucopia of nesting material, meat that had essentially liquified and sloughed off in the ever-intense heat, the noxious smell of those who had lost control of their bowels in death's throes. Truly a display, a purposeful message put together by someone. Walking through the gore revealed a suspicious lack of certain corpses and the visiting mercenaries were already getting ideas of who.  
When they found the body of the president atop a pile of almost indiscernible fleshy limbs, torsos and who knew what else with the removed top half of his skull placed on the lower half almost like a crown, their thoughts were confirmed. His own supposed bodyguards had turned on him. Massacred the entire stationed force, then him, then made this piece of artwork.  
But why? All Rex could think of was possibly survival. They could have figured that the SAC was lost already and that someone, certainly involving other supersoldiers, were being sent to take care of them. So when usable aircraft didn't arrive in some set time limit, they fled. Just them, easier that way, and obviously their employer wouldn't agree with that so the issue was taken care of preemptively.  
To where though? North America was steadily rolling back any SAC resistance and there were not nearly enough opposing supersoldiers to change that outcome. If not fighting for this alliance, they had to be looking to get cozy with someone else in exchange for getting out of here.  
“They defected.” The squad leader spoke up.  
“And made a mess on the way out.” Finn added. “Free payday for us at least, no work, all the money.”  
“But to who.” Crota stated the other obvious part of this situation.  
“North America or the Neo Pact would accept them.” Snow answered. “So either this was last minute and they haven't officially been taken in, or they've allied with the Neo pact.”  
Rex swore and radioed in to their handler to let them know the situation as well as request pickup. The responder's answer did not bode well.  
“Believe me, we fucking know!”   
The first thing that greeted Rex when he walked through the door to the debriefing room was something straight on the nose that dropped him flat on his back with a flash just behind his eyes. Or was it behind his brain? Whatever hit him made it really difficult to tell right now. The downed leader groggily came to under sounds of several voices shouting and something else being thrown and smashing against something that thankfully wasn't his skull this time.  
All his senses soon realigned and he could make out Ripper yelling at seemingly everything, Snow yelling at Ripper, Dirk sitting on a couch with one hand covering half his face and Finn and Crota taking a seat on the table just in front of him to not get involved in whatever was going on. Strong table. But this wasn't a normal spat between units, there was something wrong. Lot of that today.  
Tears were visibly streaming down Ripper's face when she was not the type to cry and Dirk had the absolute most haunted look on his face Rex had ever seen on a soldier, and he had watched everything from shellshock to men trying to hold onto their own guts after being disemboweled via shrapnel. The sole male member of No Scream was typically a confident, neat, reliable ally when not being a sadistic bastard. But now his dark hair was a mess with obvious pits having been pulled out, his already pale face looked practically drained of blood, his always roaming eyes so unfocused it was as if he were looking inside himself instead of at the rest of the world.  
“Hey!” Finn's voice boomed across the room when he saw his commander sitting up and regaining himself. “Told you it wouldn't take long, he's up, now can we get a explanation that isn't a verbal firefight?”  
Caseson, the sharply dressed attached handler of both supersoldier squads cleared his throat, eyes sparing an incredibly frightened glance in Ripper's direction.   
“This chaos and my urgency in getting you back to base is all because special operative Glasgow was K.I.A-”  
“K.I.A?!” Ripper never let the man finish, seizing him by the collar and yanking him up fast enough that there was an audible rush of air from his lungs, leaving him hanging feet off the ground wheezing to get his breath back, turning into coughs when he was dropped just as quickly. He hits the chair he had been sitting on, tumbling off it with a clank that was missed among everything else and began crawling away from the danger zone of arms reach while Ripper gave her version of events.  
“She didn't take a fucking bullet or get blown up!” The obviously distressed girl screamed at all present. “They fucking broke her! Those dead men walking sons of bastards gangraped her to death! And not from bleeding or tearing! They fucking snapped her spine and neck and I can still hear that shit!” She collapsed faster than any of Schrodinger's Forest thought possible for such a strong soldier into Dirk's side, the silent male seeming slow to react and only putting an arm around his squad mate after a few seconds of her weight being on him.  
“We were helping clear up the coast.” Ripper continued, cries silenced but obviously boiling just beneath the surface. “Simple deal, no reports of other ones of us in the area, they didn't have many in the first place, so we split up to make it go faster. Dirk and Splitter and-and-and me and G-Glasgow.” She had to take a moment, breathing deeper, clenching her shut eyes a little tighter. “They caught us. The squad you were sent after apparently.” She now gripped onto Dirk's arm until it literally looked like all blood was cut off from his forearm down with how white the skin shaded. His raised hand lowered to rest on his leg, revealing four long gash lines along his face from temple to lower jaw. Self-inflicted, like the missing stumps of hair. The story continued. “They were going to start with me. But she just had to open her big mouth and convince them it had to be her first!” The last part devolved into an ongoing wail and Dirk barely managed to get anything in himself.   
“We weren't fast enough. Only wounded one of them.” His voice came out so dry sounding, like speaking was a Herculean effort at the moment. None of Schrodinger's Forest had ever realized it before, but maybe No Scream was closer than they imagined. Maybe the group had been put together because they were the only ones who could understand one another's mindset, relate to whatever had made them into sick creatures. Despite the other weirdness and atrocities, they held each other together. And now one had suffered a gruesome death that threatened to break whatever was left of them.  
“If I didn't agree to split up. If I was just a few minutes faster.” Dirk continued almost under his breath, shouldering blame on himself, fingers twitching as if in need to scratch again. Crota silently covers the closed hand with his own to prevent that issue. The mourning pair rocked back and forth almost like children.  
“Where is Splitter?” Rex quietly tried to rouse response from them.  
“Letting brass hear it for not telling us those BASTARDS were there.” Ripper told them, spiking into a momentary yell during the insult.  
“Even if they didn't know-” Dirk began.  
“Someone's gotta pay.” Ripper finished, Dirk echoing her like it was a team motto.   
“Someone's gotta pay.”  
It was something like half an hour before Splitter showed back up. A half hour of Crota mostly making sure Ripper and Dirk didn't throw things or inflict more self-harm, of Finn looking more disturbed than any of his team figured he would, and of Snow and Rex pinning their sides together and taking hands for mutual assurance and comfort. Because what if it had been their team? What if it had been one of them?   
When Spiltter did return it was with all the grace of a controlled storm. The door was removed from one hinge, only hanging on because of two others, Caseson was once again forcibly tossed from his chair so it could be moved to the middle of the gathered supersoldiers, and the final member of No Scream clutched both Dirk and Ripper's hands when she sat down. She was always the focus and the fury of the team, pinpoint in guidance with sadism fueled seemingly by hatred rather than zealotry for pain. Her simple features watched her comrades intently, letting them know she was here with them, sharing their sadness, clear eyes bearing both grief and a cold lust for revenge.  
“We're going to get them.” Her first words came without pretense. “North America hasn't had any contact from a rouge team, so they've had to have joined the pact. Brass thinks a quick deal was made so they can be sent to eastern Europe with how bad the fighting has gotten there.”  
“AKA Poland.” Finn surmised. “Must be the scrappiest bunch in this war to still be holding out. They'll blow themselves off the map before being taken by Russia again.”  
“Probably.” Splitter nodded without actually looking away from the remains of her squad. “The rest of the eastern line is pretty shifting but the Poles have been steadfast so far. A lot of shit is being thrown at them and back so any little thing might tip the scales one way or another.”  
“Like a free supersoldier team.” Rex put the ideas together.  
“Yeah. We're going to be landing in Germany while intel works on confirmation. Then we ride transportation into Poland, help out until we get a lock on the team. And then-” Thin lips pulled back to bare sharp teeth. “-we hunt.”


	5. 5

Warsaw. Or what was left of it. Which wasn't much, a lot less than Grassroots Nobility was hoping for.  
“There is seriously nothing here but rubble, junk, and crap.” Qaxo complained, overturning a chunk of concrete only to find a doll covered in soot and missing an arm. Discarded. The Brazilian native generally called the shots for the team even though they had no true line of command, but he was eager to lead and liked to dress the part with the highest number of badges and patches adorning his uniform. Which was now the urban grey of the Neo Pact rather than the jungle camouflage of the no doubt destroyed SAC, but oh well. He was alive to loot instead of being dead in a river, so the color of his outfit was not a high concern.  
“Did you honestly expect riches?” Colland reprimanded, his Scottish lilt dripping from the words. The youngest and somewhat outsider since he was from nowhere in SAC territory, but he was the most aware and practical when his teammates sometimes got a little out of hand indulging in their own vices. “This has been the constant frontline of the third world war for a year plus, under heavy artillery and bombing 24/7 for a lot of it, with us and things like us running around like rats. You're lucky there's a building not leveled-Heck, will you give a rest, that body has been a corpse for three plus hours, how the hell do you not catch something?!”  
Heck looked up from his activity of desecrating a casualty in the most lewdly inappropriate manner, not actually leaving but at least stopping, which was good enough for his comrades so they didn't have to listen to it.  
“Heck is not my name, so quit using it. And lay off, you know how I get after battles.” Qaxo laughed loudly, not planning to listen.  
“If you can call me anything harsher than a prick, we'll stop calling you Heck.”  
The challenged supersoldier narrowed his eyes, huffing.  
“Stupid prick.”  
Another, even louder laugh, and Colland was sighing at having to deal with these two on his own.  
“You will rape a corpse while talking with us but you can't cuss? What kind of upbringing did you have? And what's with that in the first place, I thought rabbits were supposed to be nice?”  
“None of your da-” Heck paused. “Dang business.”   
Qaxo fell over on his back this time and if it weren't the quiet aftermath between shellings and offensives, would have certainly given away their position.  
Colland pushed his palm to his face before standing up, careful to keep his head below horizon level. His buddies could catch a stray one to the dome if they wanted, he liked having only the appropriate number of holes in his head. There were too many supersoldiers flooding through this battlefield of a city to be sloppy.  
“Has anybody heard from Raff?” He's been looking for our next way in for a couple hours but I haven't heard from him in like thirty minutes. Guy is all about the heads up. Think something got him?”  
“Nah.” Qaxo managed to sit back up, seeming to wave off the concern. “With that rifle of his he'll see someone before they see him. Whole reason he likes to do it himself, remember?”  
“Still,this isn't the time to be goofing-Heck I swear to whatever if you don't quit for two seconds-damn it, what?” Colland lifted his radio, having had it up to here with juggling everything at once and now having to either listen to more orders or one of Raff's far too detailed descriptions of their environment. Guy was smart but could drone on forever if let be.  
The reply crackled for a second longer, then there was some kind of...sloshing? Colland raised a brow in confusion, turning the radio face to his comrades who finally paid enough attention to notice something besides their antics.  
“Raff, something hooked on your radio? Sounds like you're swimming.”  
“More like fishing.”   
That was definitely not Raff's voice. Feminine.  
“And looks like we caught the big one.”  
“Shi-” Colland started, Qaxo opening his mouth at the same time.  
“Wha-” A distant snap in the air was heard a moment later and Heck was knocked off his corpse, hand flying to cover his shoulder. The two unwounded of the group scampered to the floor, Colland grabbing hold of Heck to drag him along until he regained his bearings. Which didn't take long, but it was obvious that shot hadn't been a clean through and through, the injured soldier's limb looking stiff and difficult to maneuver. Another shot breaks off a chunk of building just over their heads and they scramble out of the vicinity.  
On the other side of the scope, three faces draw into grins that Schrodinger's Forest had come to know meant some lines for being human were about to be crossed. Full, disproportionate, stretching the cheeks and jaws, sharp, and practically dripping with a lust for blood. The rouge SAC team was going to find out why only those four could have been No Scream and just how big of a mistake taking one of them away had been. Rex questioned if it was wise to stick around and watch.   
What felt like hours later, Colland was hyperventilating, sweat dripping down his dirtied and cut face, eyes darting rapidly to and fro in the dark. In a twist of irony he would have laughed at had he not currently been watching every single shadow like it was going to be the death of him could still be the last remaining member of the rouge team had managed to find himself inside a church. Well, the very hollowed out destroyed frame of a church, but still. There were enough pews and religious items and altars left in a not totally destroyed state for him to recognize where they were.  
They?  
Was that breathing on the back of his neck?  
He spun around faster than he thought he could without tearing something in his knee, whipping out his pistol and firing a round right into the wall behind him. Curse words spilled from his mouth afterwards, chastising his own stupidity. Gunfire was too loud, he should have used his knife, it was right beside the sidearm and better in close quarters anyway.   
He was getting paranoid, slipping up, making mistakes from pure fear and panic. With good reason. Raff, the guy who could see everyone else coming a mile away, caught and probably dead before they even knew what happened. Qaxo, dragged down into that pit kicking and screaming, torn right out of Colland's grip, where God knows what happened to him. Heck, caught like a damn fish being pulled through an ocean of concrete with a meat hook through his jaw.  
Someone wasn't just trying to kill them. They were trying to make their last moments a psychological hell. And it was working. Colland was afraid to run, afraid to stay.  
If he went out, they might be out there, just waiting for him to show himself. But if they were anywhere nearby, the report from his gun had given away his location. He could hunker down and hide if they didn't know where he was. It would be suicide if they did.  
He started trembling, gazing at where a door would have been on the building if it were still whole, as if that would still be his exit from this situation. Fuckfuckfuck what to do stay or go stay or go? His heart dropped down all the way through his stomach when there was a tap on the stone of a wall corner across from him. Nonono they couldn't have found him that quick, where was his team, where was his fucking allies?  
This city was supposed to be crawling with Chinese, Russians, the occasional Arab or African, where the hell were they? It was like he had somehow got trapped in an alternate reality, cut off from anyone who could hear or help. He was going to die terrified, maybe shitting in his own pants if he was unfortunate enough, with nobody knowing or giving a damn when he took his last breath.  
“No, screw that, and hell with you!” He grasps at some sense of defiance, pointing and unloading the entire magazine of his gun into the offending wall, the heavy caliber chipping pieces away. Boom after boom echoed until only the click of the hammer hitting the firing pin remained, useless without a bullet in front of it. He was out. But at least he got rid of that infernal tapping.  
The soldier breathed a sigh of relief he knew could only be temporary, dropping the spent mag and reaching for a spare one to reload. He felt his entire body temperature drop a few degrees when he looks down to find a hand offering him one. There was certainly breathing on the back of his neck now.  
“Don't scream.” The voice was almost sickeningly sweet.  
And despite the futility, he tried. 

A foggy curtain greets his head upon waking, the taste of copper he knew instantly as blood on his tongue, working his neck side to side to try and properly get back to consciousness as soon as possible. It was important, his memories of the seconds before going out a little imprecise but enough pieces left to know it had been a bad situation. The second his eyes adjust and he can see again he simultaneously screams and wishes he hadn't woken up at all. Hanging in front of him from cables bound around wrists and ankles and neck was Raff.   
Or it was wearing Raff's uniform. Uncertainty came from the fact the person didn't have a face. At all. He was gawking at the inside of a skull, white stained rust red , a tongue lolling from only the roof of the mouth since the lower jaw had been removed, the muscles of the sinuses trying to work even though that portion of the head had been broken off as well, the dull pink of an exposed brain with its small steaks of various grey matter and other nerve tissues. Then the tortured creature's throat moved to draw a breath and his screaming renewed, his apparently now awake teammates joining him, all of them jerking and thrashing to get away, chain bindings holding the trio in place.  
“Someone's finally awake.”   
Colland's blood ran cold again at that same sickly sweet tone, vision snapping to the right to find an oddly vaguely familiar strawberry-haired girl.   
“Only appropriate your boy here got it first. He was the one that spotted us after all, right? That fancy rifle of his has some very nice sights.”   
“Wha-” At least three of Qaxo's teeth went flying when he tried to say something, a boot sailing straight through his jaw. A guy stood above the now bleeding supersoldier, another girl, this one a brunette, coming to kneel down next to Heck and hook one of her fingers into the hole in his cheeks left by the device they used to drag him. She yanks, drawing a painful exhale from him.  
“No back-talk. You had your fun. Now we're going to have ours.”  
“What-” Colland tried the same tactic as Qaxo, getting a similar response in the form of the strawberry girl planting the toe of her boot right in his trachea. He coughed and choked and sputtered and certainly wouldn't be saying much anymore, focusing on just trying to breathe, wondering if he was going to suffocate or if the hit was intentionally pulled so as to not break his throat.  
“Fixes that problem.” The kicker squatted down to admire her handiwork, reaching back into her pockets for something. “Just to make sure you know what this is for, remember her?” A photo is pulled out and waved to all three of them. A dark haired, fair-skinned girl with a single blonde streak in her locks, in uniform like their captors with a smile and holding a knife lightly with forefinger and thumb while the blade was clenched between her teeth as if going to draw with it.  
With only slightly different times, there was a collective moment of epiphany among the former SAC squad when they realized who had taken them prisoner. And then when it all made sense, the chasing, the psychological warfare, the brutality they had treated Raff with, what was going to happen, all three of them could feel the bile rise in their throats from sheer fear.   
“Aah, there's the moment. Now we can get started.” The smiles that all three of the tormentors gave Grassroots Nobility drew the last proper screams any of them would ever make. Because those tongues were the first thing to go. 

While No Scream was busy digging out their targets eyeballs with straightened springs from their own guns Finn spoke up to his team from Schrodinger's Forest's place on a set of steps just a few feet away.  
“Poor bastards. But at least we made something taking out the Russians and Chinese to give them their playtime. Do we have to watch this though? I thought we didn't do torture. Even if these guys deserve it.”  
“You don't have to.” Rex informed. “But I will. Cause we were a big part in causing this. And like you said, they deserve it.” The squad leader's father might have been an abusive bastard towards both him and his mother but the ex-British SAS operative turned mercenary himself had at least made sure his son would be one mentally tough SOB after exposing him to the horrors of war from a young age. So he was going to stomach this, not matter how gruesome it got. Which turned out to be an understatement.  
No Scream was so cruel but so careful to keep the enemy alive until they would allow them to die. Heck, who had suggested the assault that lead to Glasgows death in the first place, was skinned alive in an amazingly precise manner. His entire outer layer was removed like a surgical procedure, Ripper and splitter going to work with their knives while Dirk kept him 'anesthetized' by choking him out for several minutes but letting him come back for air before fully dying in a cyclical process. His genitalia were straight ripped off and shoved down his throat.  
Every bone in Qaxo's body that could be broken without killing him was broken. They kept count. Some were extracted and fed to him. Others were taken to beat him unconscious with.  
Colland was sodomized repeatedly with various things. The meat hook. A barrel of a rifle. They actually managed to fit an entire pistol into his rectum, which damn near killed him, then got it out through cutting his intestines open, which came even closer, But No Scream knew the limits and though they might touch on them, wouldn't cross them until it was time.  
Raff, somehow still alive though in an obviously tortured existence at this point, was slowly reduced to a stump of a person. His arms and legs were chopped off inch by inch while each new wound was cauterized and tied off to both inflict pain and ensure he survived the process. They played with his brain a little afterwards. Carefully positioning it different ways in what was left of his skull or moving it around to test his reactions. Safe to say his garbles sounded pretty excruciated.   
In a surprise when it looked like No Scream might finally be done in their revenge, Splitter came up to Schrodinger's Forest with a request.  
“I know you didn't have to do this. So thank you. It's really meant a lot. And I was kind of hoping you would do one last thing for us.”  
“Sure. We've come this far.” Rex nodded.  
“Watch out for us for a little while. Guard and all. We're about to get a little crazy and won't be in shape to tell any nosy allies to fuck off if they pass by. We just want a little alone time.”  
“Can do.”  
“Thanks again.” And with that, Splitter rejoined her comrades. They had what looked like a moment of silence for their fallen teammate, some tears were shed by all, then a fire was lit in a large drum container. All four of the SAC team, still alive, were dumped into it.   
No Scream then stripped themselves naked, danced, sang, fired off shots, cried, laughed, remembered, and eventually had several threesomes both around the sounds of their victims cries and laments and long after they had gone quiet. It was early dawn by the time the three finally slept, all bunched together like small animals trying to stay warm, and Schrodinger's Forest were all questioning what the hell they had just been a part of.


	6. 6

This was always how it went when squads of their kind faced off directly. Either the teams blitzed one another to see who would come out on top or it turned into a slow stalking match with each side looking for that one slip up, that one lapse in awareness that would be a cause of death. Schrodinger's Forest was in Germany now, holed up in what Rex was pretty sure was a hotel with a Russian squad a couple hundred yards away in some sort of food shop. Freaking Russians.  
Crazy bastards would pump their supersoldiers full of steroids, making them even more of a nightmare for regular troops and tough to handle physically for other supers. They were bigger, faster, and stronger than any western ones, including his squad save for maybe Finn in the strength department. Fortunately their stamina was also comparatively shit because their genetic engineering apparently didn't take well to the artificial enhancement and their muscles were usually so tightly corded that their agility took a similar hit and a smart opponent could damn near dance around them.  
It wasn't a big problem for now since they were at long range, had been for a couple hours, but he figured they were going to get frustrated soon and try to turn this into a melee battle. He had Crota watching for if they tried to sneak in, their sniper fortunately being recovered now from helping No Scream with their personal issue. He had made shots from four miles out after staring that distance in his scope for hours on end without a break. On the upside, that SAC team's sniper had some really advanced sights on his rifle that Crota had now integrated into his own.  
“Got two moving in.” The serpent comrade's voice comes in through Rex's radio. The lupine leader wanted to keep this a firefight if possible since it looked like his team was a lot more patient than their current enemy and so gave Crota orders to take them if he could. A couple seconds later a shot rings out.  
He expected there would be another one but then the most rapid chatter of gunfire he had ever heard erupts again and the sniper confirms it's directed at him. In the most calm and undisturbed way of course, guy never seemed to so much as get an increased heartbeat during battle. Cold-blooded alright.  
“One down, but I have to move.” The shattering of concrete could be heard in the background. “Guy will probably make it in.”  
“Confirmed.” Rex answered, making sure to slink a little lower against the wall he was using for cover in case the fire got swept his way. The material wasn't so much protection as concealment. The gunfire was one of the Russians dual-wielding a pair of .50 cal miniguns attached to massive power/ammo packs on his back, holding at least a few thousand rounds if he judged their size right. Guy was a walking 'fuck you' and battlefield controller that would erase the material Rex was hiding behind in a couple seconds if he spotted him.  
“I'll meet him.” Finn's voice chimed in through the link. “Crota, you get safe and the two lovers can take care of that stupid gunner.”  
“Fuck you.” Snow answered.  
“Pretty sure that would be cheating and Ripper said you were awfully insistent about not sharing.”  
“You better hope I don't make it through this.”  
“Finn, don't do anything stupid.” Rex tried to break up the spat, they did not need this distraction right now.  
“Nothing stupid, just going to make him my bitch.” The shark teammate assured. Rex started to reprimand him and order a different tactic, but instead sighed and decided to plan with the feline comrade. He wouldn't listen anyway at this point.  
“Snow, do you got a shot on him?”  
“No, he's still keeping back from the window.”  
“Alright. Get some suppressive fire going then so Crota can look for an angle. I'll do the same. Either we'll chew through his cover and get him anyway if he's too dumb to move or he has to break fire to reposition.”  
“Confirmed.” Snow returns and the chattering of her rifle starts up soon after. Rex turns to peek out the hole he was using as a firing point, lining up his LMG to where the stream of opposing gunfire was very obviously coming from.  
“You're not the only one with .50 cal.”  
Then he starts whittling away the construction of the store as well and it's only a matter of time.  
Finn waits behind a marble pillar in the lobby of their current stronghold, shotgun loaded and ready. Place had actually been nice not long ago, all fancy stone and mahogany desks and stuff. He would have liked to stay in it. Maybe still could if it got rebuilt when the territory was more stable. A clink across the smooth floor draws his attention back and he can already tell it's the sound of a grenade.  
Not near him enough to do damage though so he just covers his ears so the blast isn't as bad, the boom and absolutely grating sound of shrapnel shredding everything within reach following immediately after. A room clearing tactic and he knew the charging Russian would be right behind it. He's proven correct when one of the big grunts scrambles through the door, coincidentally also waving a shotgun in front of him to check for any survivors in his path.  
He picks an angle, cutting it towards the stairs, apparently aware the pillars would be cover from his attack since he scans behind them on the way. And as soon as he reaches the one Finn had taken up residence at the shark soldier uses his own gun to knock the Russian's down, smashing him in the face with the stock hard enough to send him on his back right afterwards. He tries to recover and bring his firearm up for use but Finn is already on him, ripping the thing out of his hands and chucking it clear across the room before pointing his 12 gauge in the enemy's face.  
But he doesn't pull the trigger.  
“Strong for puny western.” The Russian tells him in what Finn guesses is the best English he could muster.  
“Thanks. It's why I haven't killed you. Lot of stories about you lot. Supposed to be big, strong, tough bastards. I've shot you. But I've never punched one of you in the face. I want to.”  
“You want fight.” The opposing soldier surmised.  
“Yeah.” Finn was well aware how much he was going to get yelled at later by Rex for this, he should end the threat immediately and rejoin the fight to finish off the last guy. But he was too much of an alpha at heart, had felt like his pride was challenged at their leader not wanting to scrap with these guys if it could be helped. They had always kept distance against this kind of supersoldier and he was tired of it. They weren't boogeymen, they could be put down just like any other living thing.  
And he was going to prove it right now.  
“Discard all your weapons.” He commands the Russian, emphasizing with his shotgun. “This is going to be bare handed. Move too quick for my taste and I pull the trigger. I'm brave, not stupid.”  
His opponent nods, slowly and carefully obeying, taking caution to appear as no threat. Once all extra gear was gone, Finn checks him over just to be sure and then kicks all the items out of useful range. He steps back to let the guy up, beginning to place all his own weapons on the check-in desk of the lobby, now severely carved up thanks to the earlier grenade. Both men now on equal ground, the Neo Pact member gets to his feet and the Schrodinger's Forest mercenary squares up not far away.  
They take time to size one another up, slowly circling, throwing feints and looking for reactions, anything they could use for an advantage. Finn tried to remind himself to play it tactical, use his agility, don't brawl with somebody bigger than him even if it was just slightly. But then another part of him said to hell with that. He was a damn shark, one of the most feared predators in the world, a perfectly designed killing machine, and he didn't back down from no one. He was going to show this Russian, show Rex, show Snow, show his mom and dad, show everyone that he wasn't that stupid little obedient drugged up kid who needed instructions on doing the basic things in life anymore and couldn't function in the world independently.  
His squad thought this was a bad idea? Screw them, those were his favorite kind. So he tenses his jaw and forgoes technique by rushing right at his opponent like a berserker. The Russian seems to think he can win that contest because he copies the attack, the protective covering of half of Finn's DNA slipping over his eyes just before the train wreck of a collision happened.  
The thud of contact was like smashing stone with a baseball bat and sent a shockwave straight through Finn's bones. But he didn't go down and neither did his enemy, both being knocked back stumbling for several feet. Now blood was rushing in the mercenary's ears, his veins, everywhere to dump adrenaline and power and rage to fuel him. This stupid soldier wasn't tough, he was prey, he was a bitch, he was going to be a statement and Finn made one hell of a statement when he slammed a body shot right into his solar plexus, doubling him over.  
“Puny huh?!” Finn mocked,enraged, clinching the back of the Russian's neck with both hands and slamming a knee right towards his face. It got blocked, a second one did too, but the third one broke a bone in one of the defending forearms right out of its skin, now jutting stark red and rough and tangled with still-connected sinew. Fingers grip his throat and he is goes airborne, being hurled against one of the pillars where his impact cracks the dirty marble and all the air is forced from his lungs. His vision is lessened to a degree by the membrane covering it but he can see the shape of the enemy soldier charging and a foot come up to crush his skull into the stone behind it.  
His first instinct should have been to dodge. But in his enraged state, it's instead to put his freakish teeth to use, opening his mouth wide enough to fit across the boot and catching it between his jaws. The momentum still bounces his head off the pillar and stuns his senses, definitely a concussion, but he has a hold now and isn't letting go. The triangular bones are brought down with the full force of his bite, shearing through boot and meat and bone all, tearing the Russian's foot nearly off.  
There's a scream as the man tries to get away, the attempt to balance on his removed appendage going wrong and sending him to the floor this time. Finn's killer instincts surge and he barrels towards the fallen enemy with a kick of his own that does connect just before his opponent could regain his footing. He stands over the now disoriented Russian, sensing the rest of this was basically a formality as the protective covering slides away from his eyes and he can think calmer.  
“Fucking badasses alright.” Finn delivers one last swift kick to the ribs, turning the enemy over on his side and leaving him clutching his torso while sounding like he was coughing up his lungs. “Think you can toss me away like trash? I ain't fucking trash!” He clutches the Russian by the throat, squeezing until a light blue was starting to replace the pale white skin and his eyes started bugging in panic. Blows on his arms attempted to dislodge the grip, still with some power, but it only made the shark soldier squeeze harder to prove his point. “I ain't nobody's trash, second fiddle, or sidekick anymore!” He practically screams, grabbing the Russian by the leg of the trousers, heaving him into the air over his head, and bringing him down just as suddenly neck-first across his knee.  
The snap sound is both loud and immediate and the Neo Pact soldier's head whips sideways into some disgustingly impossible angle, corpse being dropped on the floor. Finn huffs after the deed is done, cursing under his breath and now holding his bleeding, throbbing head. But he had done it. Had fought one of these steroid monsters one on one, no weapons, tricks, or even doing it smart. He had simply kicked his ass.  
His team appeared on the stairs a little while later with guns drawn and scanning in case the fight hadn't gone his way, theirs obviously had, but they relax upon seeing him standing alone. Little bloody, but victorious.  
“You okay?” Crota's voice didn't really change but the question itself meant he had been concerned for his friend.  
Finn replies by tossing the decapitated head of his kill at their feet, face still frozen in that expression of shock as when he was broken.  
“These guys ain't shit.”


	7. 7

The shade covered Crota even in the bright daylight of Mexico, his positioning impeccable as always and his eyes staring through the sights of his rifle. The supersoldier's attention was focused on a hotel window a couple miles away, the curtains drawn but him knowing who the occupants were. No Scream.  
Them and Schrodinger's Forest had been sent for some down time after their work in Poland proved vital to holding the eastern line once more. It had been a bloody, grueling affair but the Neo Pact would have to wait a while to muster a major offensive in the area again, seeming content to switch tactics back to trying to surround and cut off the country instead in the meantime. Mexico had been chosen because it was a place none of them were from and only one had ever visited, Splitter on a family vacation she barely remembered.  
It was a lot safer of a place now than in the first couple decades of the 2000s, ironically thanks to WW3. The US had wanted Mexico to join as an ally but only on one condition. Get control of their country away from the cartels, drug smugglers, gun runners, and corrupt officials. Or be treated as an enemy and annihilated because America would not tolerate such an unorganized, unpredictable variable right at their doorstep in such dire times. Their choice.  
There was a massive wave of arrests, executions, dismissals, and other purging tactics in the months that followed but in the end the Mexican government proved they did have the ability to actually run their country, they just needed the right motivation. The nation's corruption had run deep, with many making obscene amounts of money behind closed doors, but this alliance provided even more. Mexico didn't even have to expend many of its forces and was mainly used for auxiliary and supply purposes, such as a leave location for foreign troops.  
It seemed there were plans to keep Crota's group and No Scream working together ever since what happened in South America, the two teams sharing assignments and always ending up in the same general area. Caseson had revealed in a private meeting that this was indeed intentional, retelling how Splitter had permanently ruined a higher-up's arm in her outburst and the possibility of No Scream going rouge had scared the shit out of everyone present. But Schrodinger's Forest had seemed to make friends with the sadists and so it was found best to let them keep that up. Crota had come to find he didn't mind.  
The trio, they refused to have a fourth member added to replenish their number, fed the sniper's voyeur tendencies surprisingly well. Whereas Rex and Snow were private to a terrifying fault, nearly costing him his life the one time he tried peeking on them and was caught, No Scream would copulate anywhere they found safe enough and didn't care who heard or saw so long as they weren't interrupted. Though his view through the curtain wasn't the best, he was able to catch glimpses of bare skin, chests, arms, legs, mouths, and just let his imagination piece the picture together.  
It wasn't as if this was a particular kink of his, it was simply that he had difficulty communicating with people, hence why most of his time was spent listening to others talk or on his precious weapon. And when he did talk it was in short, quick sentences. He had always been that way. His warlord of a father liked the spotlight and so it was easy to hide in his shadow and few approached him personally for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing accidentally and drawing wrath down upon them or their family. It left him a lot of free time to explore his real interest, animals.  
Deadly ones in particular, especially snakes. He could spend hours with the things, almost seemed to fit in with them sometimes, moving slowly to gain their trust, smoothly to have them drop their guard around him, patiently until he could let them coil around his body without fear. He had killed his father with one, a small viper placed in a pot the parent liked to store his favorite nuts. His mother was always nicer anyway.  
The venomous supersoldier finishes much sooner than the trio being observed and decides to people watch since the rest of his team were off other places as well. Finn wanted to visit Mexico's legendary beaches and Snow and Rex had planned to shop for some small trinket or two as a reminder of the place and have a date night since enough time to do so was so scarce. Surprisingly he spots a familiar face among the usual hustle and bustle, a nice Cancun girl that had seemed to take a liking to him ever since they met. Her father was a local police captain and so had ran into the soldiers upon their arrival and meeting with the captain, just notifying the officials of their presence.  
They had talked some, even alone at night when his team had went to their separate quarters, but nothing more than that. No dates, no casual flings, nothing but words so far. He wondered if that was his fault or hers and whether it was good or bad. She was good for conversation in any case, accent still well-pronounced and English still not quite great, but she was learning and their talks seemed to help. Crota had zero clue on Spanish, his native tongue being Swahili and his most used language being English, but on the rare occasions they couldn't get meanings across with words his competence in reading body language and her willingness to be animated in manner served well enough for communication.  
A floral print dress sensible for the day's temperature made it easy to track his late-night companion as she went about the stalls and stores, seeming to be buying groceries. But it was odd that she was using multiple shops for that as well as the fact it didn't seem to be typical Mexican ingredients she was getting, he was actually spotting mostly American brands and labels. Trying more diverse cuisine? Was there someone she wanted to impress? Possibly him?  
Possibilities ran through his head the rest of the time until she finally turned a corner that led down a road with too many clustered buildings for him to have any kind of sight line from where he was. It looked like No Scream was done by that point and probably sleeping off their exhaustion, it was late enough for Snow and Rex to be on their date and there were no circumstances that could convince him to wade into that, but Finn should be back from the beach by now so that might be something he could do for a while. Afterwards his female friend should show up and he could figure out whatever the surprise today was about.  
Finn was indeed good company, even being in a rare happy mood and actively giving details of his outing, everything from how the sand was annoying to the gills on his neck to a small shark letting him swim with it into deep water before heading off to hunt something. His friend had greatly enjoyed the day and even brought up that Crota should go with him next time. The sniper agreed to consider it. A knock on the door signaled that they had lost track of time, Finn giving his teammate a look that asked if he had been expecting someone. A nod and the serpent supersoldier is off the bed unlocking the door for their visitor.  
“Azta.” He greets the small latina. “Is it that late?”  
“Yes.” She answers, striding in with obvious familiarity and an unmarked box when he stepped aside to allow space. “Did you-oh. You have company.” Her eyes land on Finn and there's an awkward stretch of silence with the three looking from one face to another to figure out what was supposed to be said or done until Crota's comrade elects to stand and excuse himself.  
“Guess I got carried away. I'll head out, enjoy yourselves.”  
Finn declines when Azta offers some of whatever was in the box to him as well, giving his squad mate a knowing grin on the way out and soon leaving Crota and Azta by themselves when the door closes.  
“Your friend still looks so-” There was a Spanish word or two but the mercenary thought he heard some form of 'grande' in there and so figured she was commentating on Finn's abnormal size.  
“Shark enhancement.” Crota informs, coming to sit on the bed where the contents of the box were being laid out. Turns out the American stuff had been for him, several dishes and containers sporting items and ingredients he had seen earlier that day. “If not an amalgamation, we think tiger or great white.”  
Azta nods, focusing on making sure all the food got out and didn't get accidentally spilled off the bed. Thankfully it was easily big enough to hold both them and the items.  
“My first time trying to cook American. Hope it's okay.”  
“Anything cooked is acceptable.” Crota told her, reaching for what looked like a BLT sandwich. Which was true given that him and all other supersoldiers lived off of rations that were basically souped up MREs, nutritionally super dense blocks that would kill a normal person who attempted ingesting them but suited the enhanced troops boosted metabolism perfectly. They had no taste whatsoever though, like eating cardboard. So a generous spread of homemade eats sounded perfect.  
With a pleased if slightly bashful smile from Azta the pair settled into their usual routine of light chatter, mostly her but Crota acknowledging her words or answering if his input was needed, making the food disappear along with the time. He ended up eating most of it, devouring the last few dishes while his companion fell into silent thinking. He didn't push for why, knowing the topic wouldn't be held in for long.  
“You want to go out?” The quiet suddenly broke.  
The simple question gave him more pause than he showed, but he continued finishing off morsels while thinking. It wasn't much of a surprise she would ask and he wasn't all that objected to it. He considered Azta attractive, she was around his age(physically anyway), familiar, easy to be around, and they were comfortable in one another's presence. But could he actually interact in that kind of manner with someone?  
“Why would you want to?” He probes.  
“Do I need a good reason?” Her brow scrunches as if confused at her question being answered with another one. “You're cute, quiet, I like talking to you, and you're fighting for everyone. I wanted to ask before you left.”  
“I fight because I'm paid.” He replies, never taking his morality, or lack of, as a reason someone would like him.  
“You're fighting for us and not them. You aren't a bad one.”  
Crota saw it as admirable, if a little misguided, that she thought that well of him. Which still left her offer. He had saw dating as strange ever since being changed, Snow and Rex's relationship always perplexing him to no end. And while he wasn't so emotionally attached to Azta, there truly wasn't any harm in the idea. Maybe she could become a regular part of his life and not just a vacation memory at least.  
“Yes.” He finally affirms the decision. It gets a smile and Azta is already picking out dates.  
“Tomorrow? You have some days left, right?”  
“A week.” He reminds.  
“Then can we...” She tests their level of comfort by reaching across the blankets to softly grasp his hand. No passing touch or brush of skin this time, just outright holding onto him. “Make them count?”


	8. 8

It was three days before Azta told him she loved him. Three days of dates, late nights, and doing something besides staring at everybody through a rifle scope or listening to his unit members adventures. Judging from Rex and Snow's romance, which Crota had gotten to observe from the beginning in their early transformation days, that seemed a little quick. But he said it back anyway both because it seemed an appropriate response and because he wanted to keep what they had.   
At the end of the day she kissed him. It was unexpectedly...nice. Warm and incredibly light, likely due to their physical differences. Hours later when she arrived for their nightly visit, they had sex.   
She asked if he had ever done this before and he honestly answered no. She said the same, though adding that oral and anal didn't count. He supposed her up-frontness of such a thing was a sign of trust for them. Not long after, they were taking each others virginity in the conventional sense.  
The experience was both rattling and intense for the supersoldier. He found himself unable to describe it even in his own head, only able to think in senses and emotions. Somewhere along the way he felt a connection, something intimate in a personal way different from anything else he shared with anyone he knew. Maybe that was the spark people entangled with one another felt.  
Why Rex and Snow could be around himself and Finn but only consider one another for physical comfort. They were all friends and comrades but not all were lovers. Maybe this feeling was that extra thread.  
Surprisingly hers broke before his did and he felt her clench around him tight enough that it almost hurt, forcing him to grip the sheets instead of her hips out of fear of accidentally harming her. He kept thrusting though, both out of instinct and because stopping seemed like the exact wrong thing to do, observing how his new lover writhed and let loose a string of Spanish laced with at least a couple curses he had picked up on, the ecstasy seeming to last forever while truly only being seconds. When she could breathe normally again and her eyes could close after being so widened, she cradled the back of his head and drew him in for soft kisses and soothing whispers.  
“Amazing...I've never...so hard...” Azta switched between her native language and English, causing her bedmate's pride to inexplicably swell with what he could understand. Her hand snuck between them, fingers gripping him where they were still connected while her serene expression became an excited smirk. “You still haven't came.”  
She helped him with that. The two repeated their deed several times and Crota was able to experience all the ways and places a person could pleasure their partner while exploring how his own could exclaim her undoing over and over. It turns out his body's stamina did indeed carry over in the bedroom. When he did finally pulse within on the brink of losing himself, Azta clamped her legs around his waist to pull him as deep as he would go, clung to him, and shattered his world into the dark mess her hair had become as he buried his face in it.  
Crota couldn't tell if he passed out or simply rested against Azta's head for that long, but in any case once he was aware again he found the latina spooned up against his chest, his arms around her middle as she played with his fingers. Her smile was small but content. When she notices him awake she shows him how to clean up after their activities, went at it again in the shower since he was easily strong enough to hold her up without fear of slipping or dropping, and finally managed to wash up before heading to bed intent on actual sleep. Azta resumed her curled position at his chest, encouraging his arm around her stomach.  
“I think I already know, but I kind of want to hear it.” She says in nearly a whisper. “Would you take care of us?” Definitely an expectant note in there.  
Crota wasn't sure what she was talking about at first but pieced together what they had done, where she wanted his hold focused right now, and the use of 'us' in this context. Was she thinking she was pregnant already? There were two problems he saw with that. One, they had just gotten done, any signs would certainly not be visible yet. Two, which he would hate to have to break to her, was that it was impossible for her to get pregnant, at least by him.  
It was their genetics. All supersoldiers were augmented by animal DNA, changing them at a genetic level to the point they were no longer quite human. Even breeding among their own kind had severely underwhelming odds, less than one percent as Snow and Rex had been told when their relationship became obvious. One of them and a human? Impossible, like if a lion attempted to reproduce with a buffalo rather than eat it.   
“Yes.” Crota answers anyway. It both avoided offending her and wasn't exactly a lie. In a hypothetical situation where she did end up pregnant by whatever means he would be willing to look after her and the imaginary child while his substantial income made the material needs trivial.   
The resulting giggle was utterly schoolgirl-like. Azta goes quiet afterwards, keeping her fingers wrapped around his as she got comfortable and Crota felt her breathing level out soon after. An easy sleeper. He hadn't known that before. The idea of getting to learn little details like that of someone he liked being around combined with the intensity of their earlier experiences made the mercenary briefly think that maybe dating wasn't so bad.

In the morning he sees her off back to her own home before rejoining his comrades at their hotel, where it became apparent they were aware of his activities last night thanks to a combination of enhanced senses and Azta not being very quiet. There was no teasing though. Snow and Rex had smiles for him and hoped the new relationship would turn out to be long-term. Finn looked at him a little funny, commenting how he was now the only virgin left of the four, but was glad his friend had enjoyed himself. No Scream joined them and both teams decided to hang out at the beach together.  
Crota excuses himself before the rest, saying that Azta mentioned she might drop by earlier than usual tonight for another date. He stayed in the room for hours but strangely, she never showed at all that night. He passed it off as maybe she was sore from their antics and needed the day to recover. He worried when she didn't contact him at all for a second day.  
She had never gone a 36-hour period without saying something to him or dropping by since they got here. His first idea was that calling her father would be a logical solution, he was an easy man to get a hold of. Or at least Crota thought he was until his personal number went to voicemail and calling his office resulted in him getting told the captain was out right now. He wondered if it had anything to do with Azta's absence.  
It was truly unusual for each of his teammates when their serpent comrade showed up to their doors fully geared and asking for their help that night. He was easily capable of dealing with any threat that could be here by himself, so for him to come to them with this much urgency told them there were high stakes involved. And after he explained, they agreed. Azta might have only recently solidified a relationship with Crota but she had been friendly and accepting to the entire team and no one wanted anything to happen to her if they could help it. They even stopped by No Scream's inn to ask the trio to join, all three happily agreeing.  
Everyone did what they did best to search. Crota located the tallest building in the city and hunkered down at its peak, utilizing both the 360-degree field of view he now had as well as the various sights and visions his rifle's integrated scope was capable of. Snow and Rex would circle the perimeter of the area and fan out from there to possible isolated locations while Finn took a more heavy-handed approach of striding right into what would normally be off-limits areas and seeing people that weren't to be seen at this hour. No Scream would stalk the streets and shadows, anticipating the moment someone did something suspicious enough to catch their attention. Most would never be spotted and Finn's identification patch as an U.S. supersoldier would keep local police from even thinking of attempting to arrest him.  
A thousand scenarios ran through Crota's head the entire time. But he couldn't panic, couldn't become distracted. He focused on the lowered nighttime temperature that chilled his skin more than it would have his comrades, the slightly salty feeling of the air that drifted in from the nearby ocean, the feeling of security that the bracing of his gun against his shoulder brought as his eyes hopped from shape to shape that moved below. After seven hours of this, Snow's voice broke the silence on his radio.  
“Crota. I found her.” The usual neutral tone any of them could keep on a job was absent. This was somber and paused before another sentence came, as if she were processing what she saw or was figuring out the easiest way to tell him. “I know you'll want to see this, but heads up, it's bad. She's dead. I don't want to describe any more than that. Secondly, her father actually almost found the place first, he's with a couple officers not far away. I can run them off if you want to do this alone or lead him here if you feel he should see it too. Your call.”  
Crota breathed a single deep inhale and exhale like he would when preparing to shoot. It was the worst case then. He tried to ignore the sinking, sucking feeling in his gut, fully aware that he and Azta had moved far too quickly for how deep his now-deceased girlfriend thought they were entangled with each other, but couldn't stop it from hurting. Sure there was no guarantee they would have lasted after his deployment in two days and they certainly were not at Rex and Snow's level of intimacy where one knew all the peaks, crevices, and valleys of the other person's life and personality, but they had had something. It was new, different, enjoyable, nice, and possibly special if given time to grow.  
Now it would never have that time.  
“Let him see.” Crota eventually answers. Azta had loved her father and the man had known her far longer than the sniper, it was fair. After getting the coordinates from Snow and confirming everyone knew where to go, he proceeded to leave his perch for what would be the longest walk of his life.  
The location turned out to be a warehouse a bit outside city limits, possibly for industrial storage from the size and look of it, though the thing didn't seem that far from collapsing. Old and forgotten or cheaply designed and built in the first place. Turns out he was the last one there, the rest of his team, No Scream, and a couple of people Crota guessed were officers standing outside. Snow lets him know Azta's father was still inside.  
He finds the parent sitting on the floor against the first beam from the entrance. In front of him was a small pile of jackets meant as an improvised blanket to cover the corpse beneath, the job not completely done since two charred black feet could be seen poking out. Other items could be seen scattered around the space seemingly undisturbed. Clothes Crota recognized as Azta's from his times watching her, unburned. Three fingers he thought matched her skin tone, also not charred.  
All done before whatever caused the damage to her feet and likely rest of her. He walks by the captain towards the body, kneeling beside it and reaching out to peel back the coverings. As Snow promised, it was bad.  
Formerly deep caramel skin was now pure pitch that peeled and stuck to the inside of the jackets, the destroyed form naked and lacking any former features such as hair, nails, or facial structures. The left hand was indeed missing three fingers, leaving only the thumb and pinky, and there was an odd indentation close to where the collarbone and shoulder joined. Broken. He saw no other wounds or damages that stood out as fatal. The fire had been her cause of death then.  
“Found her in the barrel.” Azta's father finally disrupted the quiet, his voice hollow and almost far away. Crota nodded that he noticed the container. The jackets are returned to their task of covering the corpse, footfalls nearly silent as if understanding the gravity of the moment as they make their way beside the parent. Crota sits and can offer little but listening. His throat was too tight to attempt words.  
“She thought the world of you.” The captain's voice cracked. He sniffed heavily. “She had a whole big fantasy life planned out.” The crying broke his tone and an attempt at pitiful laughter came out as a stuttering sob. “A baby. Travel the world a little. She always wanted to visit Spain. Live there if she liked it enough. Get you to quit going to war once you had enough to be comfortable and settle into a nice little life on the coast. God knows why.” That stuttering sob again. He was trying hard not to completely lose it. He has to wipe his eyes and nose this time, both tears and snot threatening to impede the rest of what he wanted to say. “Maybe you're that cute. Maybe because you're a soldier. Maybe you were that different from boys here.” He takes a large, heaving breath as if it could be his last and it seems to settle the worst of his oncoming emotional crash for at least a moment. “I know she moved too fast. But I hope she meant something to you.”  
The nod in reply wasn't lying.  
“Thank you. Even if it isn't true, thank you.” Two big breaths this time. “I-I hate to ask, but I have to. As a man and as a father and for my baby girl, will you please do one last thing for us before you go?”  
Whatever the request was, it wouldn't leave him a lot of time. But he still nodded. If there was something he could do for Azta and her family now, he would. So another nod.  
“We think we know who did this. Or can get to the ones that did. She wasn't alone. We found someone's boy hanged and a dog decapitated. Bunch of young bastards that think they're the new cartels. We could catch them. Put them in prison. They'd get executed. But...that wouldn't feel like justice. They made her suffer. Why should they get off so fucking easy?” There was real bite at the end of the sentence. Rage restrained by grief. Crota understood the feeling all too well right now. “I can't officially do anything but arrest them. But if a vigilante somehow got hold of information about them...”  
The mercenary understood. Mexico was on high alert for any signs of corruption anymore, especially in the police. Even if the cause was right, if the captain were caught using his position to settle a personal vendetta in some way besides what the law allowed, he would likely join the perpetrators in their fate. As a supersoldier, Crota was nigh-untouchable to domestic officials and enforcement of any sort.  
“I'll find them.” He wondered if his voice was the usual calm or reflected how churned up and confused his emotions truly were. His partner in sorrow didn't comment one way or another.   
“I'll have some files ready tomorrow. Second drawer of my desk. Cameras might be watching, so we'll talk and you'll knock me out. All the drawers will be locked, doubt that's a problem for you. Everyone on those files might not be involved, but I won't cry over any of them. Do what you want. I'll have a funeral ready before you leave, she would have wanted that much.”  
“Thank you.” It wasn't something Crota said often, but it was appropriate tonight. He stood and footsteps distanced themselves from the scene, the captain's voice coming out quietly in cadence that was possibly prayer as they left.

The next day went as planned. Crota visited the police station, had a short conversation with his co-conspirator, and slapped him into unconsciousness before ripping open all three desk drawers so it didn't look like he actually knew as much as he did. Folders in hand he fled the office, broke the fingers of a cop that apparently heard the commotion and tried to pull a gun on him, and raced by or barreled through anyone else present who were still confused and not yet sure of what was going on. The entire thing had taken mere minutes.  
Examining the files in his room, they were all in Spanish. Wasn't a problem, he had names and faces, those were the important parts. That night, seven young deviants of society had their doors kicked in by seven supersoldiers. Some family members were killed in the operations as collateral damage but that was how these things went sometimes. Possibly incriminating equipment was taken as well, phones, cameras, papers, anything they might have used in planning or committing of the act.  
There was a lot of yelling and likely cursing, seemed these late teens/young adults didn't speak much English so no one present was a hundred percent sure what was being said. Didn't really matter. It was just them, Schrodinger's Forest, and No Scream in the middle of nowhere. They could yell all they wanted, no one would hear.  
The cartel wannabes were arranged in a circle, the sacks over their heads and zipties on their wrists being removed, almost daring one of them to try something stupid once the circumstances set in. They were an odd group, some bearing a myraid of gang-themed tattoos while others looked more like nerdy shut-ins that wouldn't have had the stomach for what happened in that warehouse. But they were all guilty in some way.  
“Quiet.” Crota stated at their complaints, walking forward. One of the youngsters was bold enough to jump to his feet and swing on the serpent soldier, maybe thinking they would kill him for it rather than go through whatever prolonged plan had been made. He was wrong, Crota catching his fist, seizing his forearm with the other hand, and twisting the boy's clenched punch until his knuckles were pointing towards the ground before tossing him to the dirt back with his friends. There were screams and exchanges of shock but that incident set the tone and it wasn't hard to quieten them after that.   
Conversing was a tad difficult since none of the captured spoke anything but Spanish and their captors didn't know any of the language but individual words heard often enough on their stay here, but using names and pictures eventually got some kind of message across since they began pointing out their equipment. When allowed to sort through it, they came up with a handheld camcorder and three tapes with names written across them. Judging by how reluctant they were about handing them over said there was something they now didn't want seen on them. Examining the tapes, Crota recognized two last names, Azta's and a local politician known to heavily favor the alliance Mexico and the rest of North America had going on. The third was unfamiliar.  
So they had taped their crime and intended to either keep these for posterity or send them out to the remaining family members as a message. Trying to revive the cartels indeed. The question of whether to watch them rolled around in his head before deciding that he needed to. There were too many questions and some primal part of his brain was quietly suggesting karma might be good for the perpetrators if their atrocities were inflicted back upon them.  
He popped in the unfamiliar name's tape first. Maybe to steel himself for later, maybe because it had the least association attached. Didn't matter, he'd get to all of them. It turned out to be the boy Azta's father had mentioned.  
He was a small dark kid with lighter hair than was usual in Mexico, certainly pre-pubescent. Crota noted that Azta and the other mentioned victim, a dog, could both be glimpsed in the background sometimes and that the tape was obviously broken up into different shoots. So this was all originally one tape spliced apart and edited to be individual coherent pieces. This group had indeed put thought into their plan to work that fast.  
It looked as if the child was the one they started with, stripping him and breaking his fingers and toes. This turned into chopping off his hands and feet, promising him freedom if he could crawl away on the stumps. That journey was cut short by a stick rammed into his anus, two of the crew using it to hoist him into the air like an impalement victim. This was where the hanging came into play.   
A noose was thrown across a beam and wrapped around his neck, the stick being removed from him to let him choke, then reinserted to push him up enough so he wouldn't asphyxiate. Eventually they started asking or telling him something and motioning with the stick before putting it back in, but at some point he just stopped responding altogether, the lack of oxygen or internal bleeding finally killing him. The tape with the politician's name on it was the dog then.  
It was apparent at first glance the canine's legs were broken by the flat way it was laid and powerless manner in which the limbs flung about. They used the stick from before, the child's blood still staining it, to shove down the dog's neck. Likely to prevent biting, a needless precaution at this point made even more pitiful by the fact the creature wasn't even a large breed. The rest of the job was done via hacksaw, the pet's limbs being butchered off starting at the tail, working to the back and front legs, flipped over to open the guts, and finally it was beheaded. The entire thing seemed to visibly bother Rex the most.  
Crota knew the last one would be hardest to watch and couldn't even say for certain why. Closure? A morbid curiosity as to what Azta's last moments were like? It would be bad, that much was certain, yet he still pressed the play button.  
Given the unburned clothes at the scene, it wasn't a surprise they had used her. The fingers being lost was apparently some sort of game or punishment for her screaming, one being cut off for each person she protested against during their turn. Once she managed to restrain that agony, she began answering more of their increased chatter. He couldn't glean much, but then started recognizing some words from their own night together. And then he realized they were forcing her to make pillow talk with them under threat of either the knife or possibly more than one person at once judging by how they began crowding around.  
The torture ended by her being tossed into the barrel she was found in, blaze already going. She obviously tried to escape and the source of the broken collarbone turned out to be their efforts to knock her back in with a pipe or rod of some sort. After another attempt either her muscles were burned beyond use or she was too disoriented from the blows and she didn't rise again.  
Crota could tell he was giving off some sort of worrying reaction by the looks on his teammates faces. His head was pounding. The blood was so loud in his veins. His fingers were shaking.  
An innocent child, an animal with no concept of what these things calling themselves human could even be doing, and a young girl that thought she was on the cusp of grabbing her fantasy life. All made to scream, beg, and cry for their lives in futile pleads for mercy. His breathing was getting too hard.  
The last images of Azta's fate. Her sounds when snuffed out by death. The suffering her final hours had been. His grip on the camcorder was too tight, it was going to break.   
“Crota-” Rex's attempt at soothing barely registered. His comrade had never been this shaken before. Something snapped.  
The serpent soldier whirled around faster than any of the deviants could react, sending a backfist blow into one of their shoulders that caved the young man's entire left side in to the sternum and likely crashed him down hard enough to shatter his shoulder on the opposite side. Crota cursed, slowly trying to regain his lost composure. That had been a momentary lapse of self-control and far too quick of a death for that particular offender. So he swallowed thickly, pulling the primal urge of vengeance under with cold calculation and silent promises. He wasn't the best one to make them suffer.  
No Scream was. And the trio seemed to agree with this when he gave them a pointed look. They all smirked.  
“Wellll we do owe you one.” Ripper tilted her head amusedly. Dirk laughed.  
“As if we need that for a reason.” He grabs the nearest boy by the hair, yanking him on his rear to the dirt and drawing the dagger his name favored. “Hope you bitches had lots of fun last night, because the devil has come to get his due and that motherfucker charges interest!”  
Once again, Schrodinger's Forest watched No Scream do their thing. By sunrise, all six remaining offenders were shells of human beings. Literally.  
Their eyes, tongues, limbs, and internal organs were missing, bodies opened up and hollowed out. The remains were connected via their intestines tied together and strung through each from mouth to rectum. Crota was glad to see it. Sneaking back into their rooms would be more difficult with the gore and scent of the night's work, but the supersoldiers couldn't bring themselves to care all that much at the moment as they left the bodies to likely never be found.   
True to his word, Azta's father managed to gather a funeral the day before they were all set to leave. Closed casket, understandably but unfortunately. It was deemed best to let Crota go on his own and he was silent the entire time. He made his peace, wished Azta luck in whatever came after this life, and departed.


	9. 9

“What's bothering you?” Rex ask the girl he was sparring with after landing his fifth leg kick in a row. He could often get in one or two before someone started having to figure out a way to stop them, but she plainly wasn't paying attention.  
“Nothing.” Snow answered, stepping back and trying to hide the limp her carelessness had caused her to develop. She put her hands back up, ready to engage, but her sparring partner wasn't reciprocating.   
“It's obvious something is.” Rex shook his head. “You always keep sparring close. This isn't.” He drops his own fists. “There's no point if we aren't learning. So what's wrong?”  
Snow looked away, turning her face and eyes aside in a habit she had when not wanting to look at or deal with something. It wasn't that she didn't trust Rex, he had so far been honest and straight with her in their time here, but this was something she needed to sort through on her own. He didn't look like he was going to let it be though. She'd have to make him.  
She lashes out a straight right quick enough that she didn't think he could track but unfortunately throwing a good punch requires balance and her beaten leg wasn't up to that task at the moment. So instead of nailing him by surprise she stumbles and he merely has to tilt his head a little to let her go scrambling to prevent a face first fall to the floor. He catches her by the shoulder before that can happen either, helping her get her feet underneath her again.  
“And that's why I'm not dropping this. You can kick my ass or come close. I don't want sudden easy mode because you can't focus.”  
Snow has a momentary internal debate whether to gently let go of his arm or throw the thing off but in the end sees his point. The problem was affecting her ability and it was either solve it soon or go through more days ending in body parts not working right, maybe worse than today if other recruits weren't as nice about it.  
“Fine.” The feline trainee mutters, glancing off for a second. “But later. An instructor is starting to notice us. My room is 1145.”  
With a nod the two are back to the drill.  
Later that night Snow is sat on her bed, knees tucked to her chest, restlessly sharpening the karambit knife in her hands with the sound of stone scraping metal providing the only break in the silence. In a way it helped her think. Was this really a good idea? It wasn't common for any of the future soldiers in the compound to reveal much personal things about themselves to one another.  
The constant theme was that they were all from bad homes and situations, so maybe saying their specific situations involved drugs, crime, abuse, and such wasn't odd just so everybody had a small sense of individualism, but full stories weren't told or were reserved for close companions out of earshot of everyone else and never to be spoken of. She hadn't heard anyone's at least. Maybe she could ask Rex to share his afterwards and it would feel even. A knock on the door of the living unit immediately catchers her attention and she springs off the cot to tap the keypad and allow the door panel to slide open.  
There he was, in the same sterile white outfit she and everyone else wore, already slipping his way in for the door to close back. These kind of things weren't really against the rules anymore, not ever since one of the recruits simply broke through his door back when they stayed locked at night and later the wall when they tried reinforcing that, but the caretakers and security of the facility at least wanted odd hour visits to be done stealthily. Both for practice's sake and because it was a lot easier on their health than trying to restrain one of the fledgling supersoldiers.   
Rex greets the room's occupant with a tilt of his head and makes his way towards the bed since there wasn't much else in the units. Cot, table, and a chair were the basic furnishings. He sits down on the mattress while Snow grabbed some of the chocolate bars from the table, bringing them over and dropping the candy between them. It was probably going to be a long night and they both would need the sustenance.   
So far only one person had died of malnutrition as a result of their unexpectedly high metabolism, but others were currently in medical care and solutions were still being worked on. For now anything high in fat, sugar, or carbs would suffice if eaten in copious enough amounts. It left them feeling hungry often but meant they had essentially unlimited access to food. High-grade chocolate had become a personal favorite for Snow. Rex didn't seem to mind it either, quickly unwrapping a bar and biting chunks out of it.  
“Thank you.” He mumbles around the snack. Snow shrugs in reply.  
“If we're going to be listening to each other for a while, might as well not be hungry doing it.”  
“Agreed.” Rex grabs another bar, breaking half of it off in one crunch. “Which brings me to why I'm here. Something was troubling you.”  
His stare is directly at her but she just hums an affirmative and nods, continuing to eat. Thankfully he doesn't push and it lets her collect her thoughts, think out how she wants to say everything. It's a handful of chocolate bars later before she finally speaks. It all comes out, sometimes in a jumble as she attempts to hold her emotions together, but she makes it without a breakdown or missing anything.  
He knows it all now. Her brother, her 'parents'(she truly hoped they weren't her real ones because how could someone do those things to their own child?), the abuses, her sibling's death, and the prolonged torture that was the rest of her childhood until she was taken away. She thought she could leave it all behind and start over, but now the nightmares whispered in her psyche and scratched her mind to the point that sometimes they felt as real as their breath in her ears and their fingers on her skin. There were nights she woke up in a cold sweat with claw marks drawn down her arms from clutching herself so tightly in sleep.  
It was affecting her waking life now and that wasn't counting everything else all of them were going through. Every person being trained in the compound wasn't just young, they were children. She was 8, Rex 7, bodies and minds growing and being changed by the genetic procedure done to them at the start. It was too much at once. She didn't know how Rex seemed so calm about it all the time.  
The lycan soldier was keeping to that right now, not showing much outward signs of a response. But he wasn't judging her or eyeing her with pity and she was grateful for that. He soon nods and finishes another candy bar.  
“I'll find information on them if you want. If they're still alive, if they're your real parents, they should have those records even if they don't plan to tell us.”  
“I...don't know.” Came an uncertain response from the feline recruit. She could have done the same thing, they were taught cyber warfare along with conventional after all, but she hadn't and for a reason. She wasn't sure she wanted the answers.   
It would be reassuring if they weren't her actual parents, but would that make her want to find her real ones? Would her bond with her deceased 'brother' be made less if it turned out they were never actually siblings? If they were alive, would it make her want to hunt them down and kill them one day? Or was it easier to leave it all behind and see this as an opportunity at a new life with no connection to her old one?  
“The option will stay on the table.” Rex acknowledges the decision. “Can always do it later if you change your mind.”  
Snow simply nods in agreement and bites off more chocolate. She wasn't sure knowing the options helped her predicament. Honestly, she didn't have a clue what would. And by the silence coming from both of them now, neither had come into this with an actual plan.   
“Did that help?” Rex throws out the question, apparently on the same track of thought she was. Snow shrugs.  
“I can't tell. I guess I'll know when I sleep.”  
Rex sat quietly with her for a while after, the two of them polishing off a pile of what had to be at least a few dozen chocolate bars, then sitting in more silence when it seemed they didn't have more to talk about. The lycan soldier eventually sighs and puts a hand on her shoulder.  
“Lay down.” He tells her, getting a confused look. But when he lets her know it was a possibly helpful idea, she follows along, laying down on the cot and turning over on her stomach to be comfortable. The surprise comes when Rex lays beside her, one arm draped across her shoulders while he settled into some position half on his back and half on his belly. He closes his eyes as if to sleep but she stares at for a bit longer.  
“What are you doing?” Snow questioned when it didn't look like he would be explaining himself.  
“Wolves sleep as a pack.” Rex informed. “Some directly with one another or huddled together. For protection and affection. I don't have a better idea, so grab onto me or something if you start having nightmares.”  
Snow's gaze drifted downwards, not sure of what to make of that or what kind of response was appropriate. This certainly didn't feel bad. He was actually pretty warm and his scent was more natural than the candy she kept and so to her animal instincts, more appealing. And there was the possibility this could help her. She lay her head on the pillow and closed her own eyes.  
“Thanks.”


End file.
